Up at 5am and taxi to Heathrow at 6am which arrives in record time at 7am, pity our 10am flight had been cancelled 15 minutes earlier, along with many others because of freezing fog. We are all told to rebook, which causes hour long waits on the premium rate phone number supplied or even longer waits in the snaking Disneyland style queues in Zone E where we stand in line until we have the bright idea of calling the BA Executive Club number and hey presto, 20 minu...

And so to the final stage of our trip, a couple of days on Cape Cod. So many of the places we have visited or passed through appear well known to us through their assocatios with the Kennedys, Kennebunkport on the drive from Boston to Maine, Jackie K came from Newport where they married and they also had a house on Cape Cod at Hyannis, although for the most part we have avoided the most touristy areas if possible. The Cape is a long sandy spit less than 2 miles ...

Rhode Island is the smallest state, barely 50 by 40 miles. We drove through Connecticut, stopping only for giant pancakes stuffed with blueberries (we felt we should at least eat in the state) and crossed a high swooping bridge to Newport which is itself on an island and gave the name to the state as a drunk or myopic sailor thought it looked like Rhodes. We have encountered a lot of road works on the small roads and each has a policeman directing the traffic, wh...

From Vermont we drove south through the Green Mountains to eastern Massachussets, a rainy day but we pootled along country roads. As there are so many trees and houses are wooden each small village seems to have a volunteer fire service. Lenox is a tiny town just north of Stockbridge, made famous by the artist Norman Rockwell, which has made it very touristy for our taste. There is a museum of his work and the area has large houses which used to belong to the ric...

As we left the White Mountains and drove west and south towards the Green Mountains we have seen more of the famous colourful fall foliage and some gorgeous countryside and small villages, more covered bridges, pumpkins growing in fields and the beautiful Connecticut river, driving along quiet back roads often without seeing other cars for miles. Hurricane Irene destroyed many buildings, roads and bridges in 2011 and some traces of this damage still remain. Ver...